Using Amplify to host a backend application?

AWS Amplify Gen 2 is designed to support backend development and deployment, though it takes a TypeScript-first approach rather than being specifically built for NestJS frameworks.

Amplify Gen 2 provides a code-first developer experience for building fullstack applications with backend capabilities. It allows you to define your app's data model, business logic, authentication, and authorization rules in TypeScript. The @aws-amplify/backend library offers TypeScript-first tools for setting up real-time APIs and NoSQL databases, as well as authentication configuration.

For your specific use case with NodeJS and NestJS, you have a few options:

1. You could create a backend-only Amplify project that defines your data models and authentication, then deploy it using Amplify's deployment capabilities. This would give you access to Amplify's managed services for databases, authentication, and APIs.

2. Amplify Gen 2 is layered on top of AWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK), which allows for extension and integration with existing AWS resources. This means you could potentially incorporate your NestJS application within this framework.

To get started with a backend-only project, you would:

• Use npm create amplify@latest to initialize your Amplify project
• Configure your backend resources in the appropriate files (e.g., data models in amplify/data/resource.ts)
• Deploy using npx ampx sandbox for development or connect to a Git repository for production deployments

Amplify provides per-developer cloud sandbox environments for local development and testing, making it easier to work on your backend before full deployment.
Sources
Concepts - AWS Amplify Gen 2 Documentation
Separate frontend and backend teams - AWS Amplify Gen 2 Documentation
Quickstart - AWS Amplify Gen 2 Documentation
Quickstart - AWS Amplify Gen 2 Documentation